Memorable debuts: Aubameyang starts with a hat-trick

3 years ago

Ahead of the release of the 2016/17 Bundesliga schedule on 29 June (11:00CEST/09:00GMT), we look back on some of the standout displays from players taking their Bundesliga bow.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang moved to the Bundesliga from France in summer 2013, and certainly made a lasting first impression, netting three of Borussia Dortmund's goals in a 4-0 win at FC Augsburg on the opening day en route to a season's tally of 13.

The Gabon international is just one of three Bundesliga players to take the matchball home with them from their maiden 90 minutes in the German top flight (Olaf Marschall for 1. FC Kaiserslautern in 1993, Hermann Ohlicher 1973 for VfB Stuttgart in 1973).

Three years, 96 Bundesliga games and 54 goals later, Aubameyang is the most successful African player in the league's history. Twenty-five of those strikes came in a fruitful 2015/16 when he finished second only to FC Bayern München’s Robert Lewandowski in the goalscoring stakes. It is a tally that no African player had ever previously achieved while also making him Dortmund's all-time foreign-born leading scorer in a single season (beating Lewandowski's 24 of 2012/13). It would even have seen him pick up the Torjägerkanone for the Bundesliga's leading scorer in no less than 31 previous seasons.

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